Wednesday, March 03, 2010

THE WORLD'S FIRST (AND POSSIBLY BEST) TRAVEL AGENT


I'm reading a book about Thomas Cook called, "The Romantic Journey." Cook (above) was the world's first travel agent, and if you think that's a dull subject for a book then you couldn't be more wrong. Cook was a genius!

The man was born in 1808 while Napoleon was still in power. He spent the first half of his life arranging tours to English seashore resorts for the religious and temperance societies that he belonged to. I don't think it ever occurred to him or anyone else that you could make much money doing that. He just wanted to be useful to the organizations he belonged to. Besides, if there was money to be made, it would logically go to the railroads and hotels, not to the poor fool who got stuck with buying everybody's tickets.



Like I said, even Cook didn't think there was money in it. Travel in Cook's time was a dirty affair for people who weren' t rich. The railroads advertised cheap rates to the seaside towns, which resulted in shockingly crowded beaches and hotels. It wasn't uncommon for twelve people...twelve!...to share a bed, with other friends sleeping on the floor. Stressed out hotel patrons would sometimes show their resentment by pooping in the bureau drawers.



The streets were crowded with rowdies and the beaches were so densely packed that bathers could hardly see the sand (above). Women who could afford it rented clunky changing room wagons which attendants pulled out into the surf for them.



Occasionally big waves (above) would knock over the wagons and the women inside would have to be rescued....sometimes by naked men. It seems that a sizable number of men believed that bathing suits were unhealthy for the wearers.

Cook's insight was that was that many people would be be happier in less crowded resorts in places like Scotland. Some of those resorts weren't served by the railroad, so Cook arranged for carriages or boats to supplement the rail service. Some English customers regarded the Scots as barbarous, and didn't relish the idea of negotiating with them for meals and hotel rooms, so Scott sent agents ahead to take care of all that, and he was even able to get group discounts. Little by little, he assembled the modern concept of the package tour.



What's fascinating about all this was that each of Cook's improvements was copied by the railroads and steamship lines, who opened their own copy cat travel agencies, and who had the advantage of established reputations and lots of money for advertising. Amazingly, Cook managed to stay ahead of the game.



How did he do it? Maybe it's because his competitors were just hirelings of the railroad and had to get every change okayed by higher-ups. Cook was free to innovate. When a woman on one of his tours complained about unsanitary foreign toilets seats, he quickly invented a personal folding metal toilet seat cover. Now that's enterprise!



Cook also benefited from his philosophy. Other travel agencies were diverted by lucrative commissions from the wealthy. Cook, on the other hand, found it impossible to disavow his innate sympathy with the working man, and instead chose to treat his ordinary patrons as if they were wealthy. He arranged tours for the rich, but he was careful to keep his standard prices low, and expected customers to dress well and avoid offensive behavior. Rowdies got a refund and were booted out. The much admired civility of the British middle class owes a lot to the nudges it received from business men like Cook.

BTW, the final two posters weren't originated by Cook's agency. I put them up because they exemplify the spirit of what the man was trying to achieve.





14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating post, Eddie. It would be interesting to know at what point people on "Cook's tours" started to use the indispensable "Baedeker" handbook, another 19C innovation.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Stephen: Interesting comment! I never heard of Baedeker til you mentioned him, but I looked him up on the net and was much impressed. Thanks for the tip!

pappy d said...

That hostile hotelier is clearly Irish.

Steven M. said...

"Stressed out hotel patrons would sometimes show their resentment by pooping in the bureau drawers."

Barfarama!

Vincent Waller said...

Eddie, yet another informative and delightful posting. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! I find out stuff here I'd never hear about anywhere else. Reminds me how much I need to take a trip to a secondhand bookstore cause 99% of the awesome information and stories about the world aren't online.

Anonymous said...

Interessant!

Jenny Lerew said...

It sounds like a great book, alright. I'll look for it.

Does he really write, though, that the changing rooms were for avoiding rowdy beachgoers? That's not at all what I've read.

They were used so that a woman could change and enter the sea in her (in those days) very immodest bathing suit. She got in the landward side, was wheeled down to the surf, INTO the surf, and after changing in the hut could open her sea-facing door and get into the water up to her neck without anyone seeing her wearing her figure-hugging suit. A woman would have used a changing hut if there were only a few or even no other people on the beach at all.

Baedeker is mentioned as regarded as canon in "A Room With A View" and other writings of the 19th-early 20th c.; in Forster's case he was making a little fun of the upper classes using the B guide as a strict authority or what to see/where to go; it's suggested that tossing it away and just wandering is really maverick-or fightening.

They are fascinating to read now as examples of what was thought then-as indeed any vintage guidebooks are--I love ones written pre-WW2 about NYC and Los Angeles myself.

Anonymous said...

That's so cool, Eddie. I'd love to find a need or want like that and innovate solutions for it.

Mr. Trombley said...

Mr Fitzgerald,

I would like to ask your opinion on a particular variety of digital restoration. I ask you because I trust your artist's eye and I know you've been bitten by other forms of digital restoration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durova/Gallery

Compare the following images as an example:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Fultondesign.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Fultondesign7.jpg

The first, to me, looks a historical artifact - what a submarine looked like 204 years ago. It carries only the weight of age.

The second, though, looks like the plan for a submarine that could be built by skilled amateurs today, a living thing!

Obviously, my prejudices lie with her.

While I typed this, I was reminded of this interesting factoid of the history of caricature. The only existing image we have of mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre! The odd story and the picture are linked below.

http://www.ams.org/notices/200911/rtx091101440p.pdf

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/PictDisplay/Legendre.html

The demonic visage is an improvement on the slack jawed politician, no?

thomas said...

The Baedecker maps are quite beautiful.
baedeckermap

I know you've done map posts before. How about doing a post on old Baedecker descriptions, that you find interesting? I wonder if there's a pre-1945 Berlin guide.

My one experience with the Thomas Cook agency was really good. Seems like they're carrying on the tradition.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Mr. Trombley: I was forbidden access to the submarine pictures, which is too bad, because the restoration you talked about sounded interesting.

The story of the mathematician's caricature was fascinating. No doubt the flamboyant sketch was an inspiration to lots of students!

Jenny: What you said certainly sounds plausible. I don't have the book at hand, so I'm not able to check to see if my memory of the story was right.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Thomas, Jenny: Interesting map! I'd be interested to see what the text was like.

About the pre-war Berlin edition: I have a picture book of germany from 1937 or so, and there's no hint of politics in it, except some bragging about recent modernist construction, which mars all travel books.

It's heartbreaking to think of how much of Germany's venerable old character was altered in that crazy decade, and of how many of the beautiful buildings pictured were since lost to history.

Unknown said...

Thanks of sharing the history of the travel agent..i was surprised to know of Thomas and his work in 18's was outstanding. Hope many will really love to this..


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